The noise in the pool area was skull-splitting between the screechy girls splashing around and the constant sound of the lifeguard’s whistle. Poor kid. He had his hands full. I’d feel sorry for him, but I had other things to worry about. Once again, I had to wonder. Riley could’ve called the CIA for help.
Unless he’d been disavowed. You might have thought something like that would only happen on Mission Impossibleâbut it was real alright. Especially on black ops in a place we weren’t supposed to be. I couldn’t really tell stories out of school. They made me sign a confidentiality clause when they “retired” me.
Alrightâ¦just one. We had this agent in India who got drunk and took notes of his meeting with his handler on a napkin that he inconveniently left on the bar table. He might’ve been okay, but in his blurred mind he miswrote instructions as, blow up Prime Minister’s dog. And although that wasn’t what he was asked to do at all (can’t tell you but suffice it to say it was something more akin to say, stow the logbook), the Prime Minister, whose niece was working at said bar, wasn’t amused. He had a security detail on his schipperke for a whole year after that. As for the agentâwell, he now sells insurance in Topeka.
So why did Riley call me? The only thing I could think of was that it was personal. He’d gotten into something unrelated to work and didn’t want his boss brought into it. If that was the case, what did he think I could do? I was here with twelve little girls. Was I supposed to drag them with me across DC, toting guns and looking for trouble? I mean, sure, they could totally handle it, but I wasn’t going to do it. He’d have to get his own troop for that.
The only kind of problem Riley ever had was with women. If that was it, he could just figure it out himself. But in the phone call, he’d said, “Help me.” Did that mean more than one woman? If so, he probably deserved whatever they were going to do to him. He made serial womanizers look like priests who were overly eager about celibacy.
I couldn’t really say anything. I’d fallen for his charms once. I couldn’t help it. Riley had this sexy, surfer vibe with longer-than-normal, wavy blond hair, a glowing tan that never seemed to fade, and a smile that not only lit up a room but also dissolved the underwear of any woman present. We dated very briefly, but it turned into a compatible working relationship until a year ago when he barged into my life and started to confuse me with random kisses.
An idea flashed into my mind. What if it had to do with the yakuza? Then it was my problem. Almost one year ago, yakuza leader Midori Ito had rudely shown up dead in my kitchen. At first, we thought it was related to the deaths of other baddies who also inconveniently inserted their corpses into my life. But it had turned out to be unrelated.
Riley and I had taken it upon ourselves to dump the body behind a Japanese supermarket in Chicago in order to disconnect ourselves from the murder (of which we weren’t guilty). The CIA hadn’t known about it. Ito’s body had been found a few months agoâbut as far as we’d seen, no one could trace it back to us.
Unless they had. A shiver went through me. Was Riley being held by the yakuza? That sucked. The Japanese mob was scary. They were a very stabby crew and had lots of very sharp swords. Dammit. Why didn’t he call me back? Why didn’t Maria call me back?
Who had Riley? And why?
MARSHMALLOW S’MORE MURDER
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Double Down (Raven McShane Mysteries Book 4) Page 22